(Bio-) Hacking your body

Obesity is a disease that has reached pandemic levels and the numbers keep frighteningly increasing. To fight this, several approaches are used and one that has been gaining more attention in the last years is intermittent fasting (IF), that consists in intervals of fasting and feeding that can be for hours or days. Our main goal is to identify molecular changes in the liver of mice subjected to IF and time-restricted feeding (TRF) in order to point out novel genes that could be used as targets for obesity therapy. Using transcriptomics analyses, we analysed liver of mice that went through pro

Many organisms are able to produce light to attract prey or avoid predators through a phenomenon called bioluminescence. In combination with advances in stem cell technology, our lab engineers cells containing these light-producing proteins to look inside the cell types associated with diabetes.
Diabetes is the 8th leading cause of death globally and occurs when your body does not produce enough insulin, a hormone that reduces blood sugar levels. Our goal is to use these research tools to speed up the screening of potential diabetes drugs and to improve the survival of transplanted cells.